Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Mercedes got ahead of itself - Wolff

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Toto Wolff admits Mercedes got ahead of itself during the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend which contributed to its poor race performance.

Having qualified on the front row, both Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg had poor starts to drop behind the two Ferraris. Sebastian Vettel went on to take victory having led in to Turn 1, while Kimi Raikkonen looked set for second place until a reliability issue forced his retirement.

With new restrictions on start procedures set to come in to force at the Belgian Grand Prix, Wolff admits Mercedes had been analysing their potential impacts and feels the team neglected any potential start issues at the Hungaroring.

"We [were] practising Spa-starts on Friday," Wolff told the official Formula One website. "Probably we’ve traded the future for the present. You always should live in your time - we’ve probably experienced that [in Hungary]."

And Wolff says Mercedes' poor starts are making its rivals look better after Williams also jumped to the front at the start of the British Grand Prix.

"[In Hungary] it was Ferrari - at the last race it was Williams. Probably they look so good as we didn’t make a great impression."

Click here for a lighter look at some scenes from the Hungarian Grand Prix

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.